wise-women.org

[olena]

Hi

I was waiting for some one to check in, on Chapter One. and decided to jump in here. I read chapter one, twice. I am going to try to set aside tomorrow to set up a work space. and do the example.

I am way over my head, with the PHP, but I think the book is very concise and I can follow the explanations. I am not a programer but have read enough to be able to keep up. I think.

Olena

[trillium]

Hi All,
I'm a little behind myself - my daughter is in town for a couple weeks and I've been spending all my "free" time with her. I've read chapter one, but have yet to work through the examples. I've taken programming classes at a community college - Java and JavScript - they were not my strong points, but at least I am familiar with the terms and process. I'll check in again soon. Anybody else? ~Kate
_________________
kate elliott
www.trilliumwebconnections.com (coming soon, I just changed my name)

[olena]

Kate

I would guess that the pace of doing the book should be one chapter every two or three weeks. I don't think we will loose focus if we check in each week and say how we are doing, one week to read the chapter, one week to do the example. and one week to figure out what happened. I think that will work for me. Since this is the first time we have done a book study, and we have a hunk of a text. It seems that plodding along is not the same as loosing focus. What does anyone else think?

Glad you are experiencing the time with you daughter.

[Louise]

I think that's a very workable plan. Thank you for suggesting it. If my timing is right, then this week would be the "doing example" week??

I have also read Chapter 1 and there are a few things in there I'm eager to see if they work. I'm interested in seeing how the "heredoc" method for specifying strings works. That was something I haven't seen mentioned before.

Louise

[Lindiwe]

Hi,
just checking in to see how things are coming with the group. I haven't been able to participate, but now I should be able to get into the swing of things. I was working on a project where I had to use a lot of PHP, so it was a good busy. I had to integrate a Flash frontend with a database using PHP. So these last few weeks have shown me how much I really need to go through this book, it has been quite stressful at times.
Lindiwe

[olena]

Well for Chapter 1 I got stuck. Getting a sandbox set up took all of my time for this effort.

I now have company coming from Hawaii (I am so excited) that I need to clean house and focus on them.

I made an executive decision to set up a windows 98 box for this project. I got the Dell dimension set up. and linked to the Internet. and installed a netscape browser. And then could not find the driver for the monitor. So used up my time trying to get the screen so I could read it. The default monitor is coming up 600x480. not to go into the vagaries of resetting monitors on win 98. I got stuck. and used up my time allotted for this without creating an environment for the PHP. I am reluctant to use my working laptop for practice. I like to keep them separate. I need the time to figure it out. In the mean time I will be looking at workaround solution. 1. completing setting up the win 98 box for doing. 2. use a hosted website that has php and my sql loaded. .


I could try to read the chapter 2 . the week of the 26th. It seems to me that just reading the book gives me a knowledge of understanding PHP.

Or keep messing with setting up a play ground. and hope you all don't get too far ahead of me.

--
Olena Black
The more you know the better decisions you make.

[veronicay]

Olena, a quick and easy way to install Apache, PHP and MySQL is to use XAMPP:

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Regards
_________________
Veronica

[Louise]

And, for those of you using Mac OS X, check out MAMP. It's the best thing I ever did ... I'll be able to work along and test without ever uploading any files anywhere. When I finally get a good result, then I can upload files to share with others. The XAMPP site indicated their Mac OS version might be less than wonderful. Here is where to find MAMP ... available for both Power PCs and the new Intel-based machines.

http://www.mamp.info/en/home/

Although we seem to be off to a rather slow start here, I do hope we'll continue even if at a slower pace than originally intended. One thing that might help might be if we found some way to let people know when someone was posting here. Right now, I seem to only get a notification if I've posted something and someone posts a reply.

Thoughts??

Louise

[trillium]

Hi All,
Well we are off to a slow start, but I want to continue. The first chapter is rather daunting, but I plug away a few pages at a time. So far, the practice pages have all worked. It is a little confusing, but I just keep going over the info. Any other input? How far have ya'll gotten? ~Kate
_________________
kate elliott
www.trilliumwebconnections.com (coming soon, I just changed my name)

[teksupddg]

Hi all,

I am working on the chapter 1 examples and I am wondering about a particular piece of code, it is part of the section on using operators and I'm not sure if I'm missing something that's explained in the text or not:

$totalamount = $totalamount * (1 + $taxrate)

My question is where did the '1' in that come from, is it a php thing I missed? Does it have to do with the value of the $totalamount variable at some point?

Thanks for any insight.

[edited to add: duh...it's math not code.
I never seem to figure these things out until I ask the question out loud ]

[teksupddg]

Has anyone seen an errata page for this book?
some of the code as printed isn't good.

chapter 1 page 52 the freight.php
the quote marks for the echo statements don't work as printed.
however if you look at the doc on the CD it works.
Just a head's up.